as accomplices, Hill, Green, and Berry, three servants at Somerset-house *. But his mind was not hardened against the sting of remorse: he requested to be brought a second time before the king and the council, and on Dec. his knees, with the strongest protestations of horror and 29. repentance, declared that the whole of his confession was false, and that he knew nothing of the murder or the murderers. The managers attributed this retractation to the arts of the jesuits. Prance was remanded to Newgate and chained to the floor in the condemned cell: his terrors and his sufferings bereaved him occasionally of his reason; and Dr. Lloyd, lately made dean of Bangor, and Boyce, the keeper, urged him to confess, the 1679. one employing spiritual, the other worldly motives. At Jan. last he consented: but his disclosures were now so numer11. ous and portentous, that the credulity of the dean was startled; he declined any further interference †, and left the unhappy man to the management of Boyce, with whose assistance a narrative was composed, professing to detail" the manner and circumstances of the murder, "the conspiracy to assassinate the earl of Shaftesbury, Feb. "and the vile practices of several popish priests." The 10. prisoners Hill, Green, and Berry, were now brought to trial: ignorant and unassisted, they were unable to detect and expose the glaring inconsistencies between

* Like Oates and Bedloe, he had the folly to mention a room in Somerset-house where the body lay, and being sent there, like them was unable to find it. L. Journ. 438.

"

See L. Journ. xiii. 431. 436. 438. James (Memoir), i. 535. Extracts from the journal of the committee, and the letters of Prance and Lloyd in Brief Hist. iii. 64-86. "From the time of taking off my irons and changing my lodging, which was upon my yielding basely to forswear myself against those innocent persons who dy'd on my wicked evidence, Mr. Boyce was the man that acted for me, and writ many things which I "copy'd after him. I found by his discourse that he had been several "times with my lord Shaftesbury and with Bedloe, and he told me that I "should be certainly hang'd, if I agreed not with Bedloe's evidence." p. 127. It is plain that little reliance can be placed on the words of Prauce: yet, as Dr. Lloyd observes," he was best able to refute his own fictions con"cerning the murder, in which his word may be of some credit, but of none in any thing else." p. 85.

"A True Narrative and Discovery, by Mr. Miles Prance, of Covent"8 garden, Goldsmith." 1679.

CHAP. 11.]

MONTAGUE AGAINST DANBY.

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the depositions of the two informers; and all three received judgment of death. Hill and Green, who were catholics, having resisted every attempt to draw from them an acknowledgment of guilt, suffered at Tyburn: Feb. to Berry, a protestant, the respite of a week was granted: 21. but he, like his companions, disappointed the hopes of 27.

the committee, and died like them with asseverations of 1678. innocence in his mouth*.

But from these scenes of horror it is time to divert the reader's attention to a new intrigue of a very different description, which led in its consequences to the dissolution both of the ministry and the parliament. It will be remembered that on the 25th of March the lord treasurer, in opposition to his own judgment, wrote by order of Charles a letter to Montague, the ambassador at Paris, commissioning him in certain circumstances to demand from Louis a pension of 6,000,000 of livres in return for the king's services in disposing the allies to consent to the conditions of peace. The demand was never made --not because it shocked the patriotism of Montague, for it had been suggested and recommended by him †—but June because the terms proposed were rejected by the French 24. cabinet. What secret overtures were afterwards made to the ambassador by Louis, we know not: but he felt or pretended to feel as an injury the king's refusal of

State Trials, vii. 159-230. Ralph has printed the depositions of Bedloe and Prance in parallel columns, that the reader may see at one glance how they contradict each other in almost every circumstance of time, place, and thing, i. 419. Perhaps I should mention that great endeavours were made to implicate in the plot Pepys, secretary of the admiralty to the duke of York, and it with that view Atkins, his clerk, was charged and tried as an accompuce in the murder of Godfrey. Bedloe, before the lords, swore that one of the accomplices, "who called himself "Atkins, was in all things very like the prisoner; but because he never "saw him before that time, he could not positively swear it, but he verily "believed him to be the man." L. Journ. 351. Before the trial, however, it was known that Atkins that very evening was drinking till he was intoxicated, on board one of the king's ships in the river: and Bedloe then swore that the accomplice" was not such a man as the prisoner. He had a more manly face and beard." State Trials, vi. 1473-1492; vii. 242. Atkins of course was acquitted.

His letters are published among those of Danby, 1. 13. 20, 21. 26. 36. 38.43.60.62. 82.

his request to purchase the office of secretary from sir Henry Coventry, and suddenly abandoning his situation in Paris, he returned without permission or notice to England. Danby, apprehensive of his enmity, watched Aug. his steps with solicitude: it was discovered that he not

only associated with the popular leaders, but held secret Oct. and nightly conferences with Barillon; and his attempts 21. to procure a seat in the house of commons convinced the minister that, if Montague delayed to strike the blow which he meditated, it was only till he could shelter himself from the royal resentment under the privileges of parliament. At the election for Grinstead he was defeated by the foresight of Danby: at that for NorthNov. ampton he was returned by the Mayor; his absent 6. opponent sir William Temple by the sheriff: but Montague petitioned, the popular party espoused his cause, 11. and the house pronounced him duly elected *.

Montague's real object was the ruin of the lord treasurer. With the popular leaders it had been arranged that he should bring forward the secret despatch of March 25th; and that they should ground on it a vote of impeachment against Danby. With Barillon he had concluded a contract, that 100,000 livres should be spent by the ambassador in purchasing the aid of the most powerful speakers in parliament, and 100,000 crowns should be paid to Montague himself, if through his exertions Danby were removed from office within the course of six months t. Still he delayed. His timidity was not satisfied with the protection afforded by a seat in parliament, and he waited for the time when the disbandment of the army should render the king less able to violate the privileges of the members. But Danby had already received a hint of his danger: he knew that

Ibid. 78, 83. 88. 115, 116. C. Journ. Oct. 21, Nov. 6. 11. 23.

+ See Barillon's despatch in Dalrymple, 193. If Louis objected to the 100,000 crowns, he was willing to accept a capital producing 40,000 livres of rentes on the Hotel de Ville, or a pension of 50,000 for life, at the option of the king. Ibid.

A.D. 1678.] SEIZURE OF MONTAGUE'S PAPERS.

167

his despatches had been secretly shown to some of his opponents, and it became to him a matter of the first importance to gain possession of the obnoxious papers. With this view he laid before the council the informa- Dec. tion given by sir William Temple that Montague had 19. privately visited the papal nuncio at Paris, and might therefore be in some manner or other implicated in the popish plot*: it was immediately resolved to pursue the inquiry; messengers were despatched to make the seizure of his papers; and Erneley, chancellor of the exchequer, delivered a royal message, announcing this proceeding, and the information on which it was grounded, to the house of commons.

The matter had been conducted with so much secrecy that Montague and his friends were taken by surprise. The ingenuity of Powle (he afterwards received five hundred guineas from Barillon as a reward for his services +) relieved them for a while from their embarrassment. The seizure he maintained was a breach of privilege, unless the information had been taken upon oath, and, at his suggestion, lord Cavendish with other members waited on the king, to ascertain the fact as to that particular circumstance. To their mortification Charles drily replied, that he would return an answer after the two houses were risen.

In the next place Harbord, another of Barillon's pensioners, was deputed to visit Montague's house, with private instructions from that member. Having ascertained that the letters, the only real objects of anxiety to both parties, had hitherto escaped the search of the officers, he returned; Montague immediately announced that he had in his keeping papers containing indubitable proofs of the guilty projects of a certain great minister;

Danby's Letters, 265-267. Dalrymple, 198.

Barillon appears to have made out in December of each year an account of the money which he disbursed for political purposes. The account for the present year up to December has not been discovered; that for the year 1679 will be afterwards noticed.

lord Cavendish moved that documents of such high importance should be placed under the custody of the house; and Harbord, lord Russell, and several others were commissioned to proceed and take possession of the letters in question, in the name of the commons of England. They returned bearing a small casket, which was placed on the table; and Montague, selecting from its contents two papers, delivered them to the speaker, protesting at the same time that it had been his intention to have communicated them through secretary Coventry to the king, and that he should not have presumed to make them public even now, were it not in obedience to the express commands of the house. Both bore the signature of the lord treasurer. One, of the date of Jan. 16, stated that the adjournment for thirteen days had been adopted in the hope of discovering in the interval some expedient for a peace; the other proved to be the celebrated despatch of March 25, with which the reader is already acquainted.

The reading of these papers electrified the house. They were described as a continuation of Coleman's intrigue; they proved that the same objects were kept in view, and the same manoeuvres employed; that the king's ardour for war had been a mere pretext to wring money from his people; and that, the moment money was voted, he had offered to sell the nation to a foreign sovereign. The debate was long and stormy; and no one expressed more virtuous indignation against pecuniary transactions with France, than those who were then in the pay, or who had planned the prosecution with the advice of the French ambassador. The house, carried Dec. away by the impulse of the moment, voted by a majority 19. of sixty-three voices that the lord treasurer should be

impeached of high treason, and that his letters should be entered on the journals *.

Thus far the cunning of Montague had triumphed

* Journ. Dec. 19. Reresby, 74-78. Parl. Hist. iv. 1054—1067